


Dream Big

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 03:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13450044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: On the other side of all of this there is nothing that they’d decided together that had been a mistake.





	Dream Big

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justlikeswitchblades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlikeswitchblades/gifts).



> i love you!! happy 6 months <3<3<3<3

The garage door is open when Tatsuya gets home, and Taiga’s truck is parked outside on the front lawn. (What used to be the lawn, dubbed as such by their overly-friendly realtor even though at the time it had been empty but for dust and they’d both looked at it and seen the blacktop it would become.) It feels odd to say the front yard; it’s not quite a rink (but it’s more than good enough for hockey). There are no real benches; they haven’t painted over with more than sidewalk chalk borrowed off a neighbor’s kid trying to play hopscotch, a close enough approximation of center, blue lines and a goal line.

Taiga’s sitting on the tailgate, his shorts riding up from resisting how he scoots back to lean against a gear bag (that can’t be comfortable). Tatsuya can practically feel those tight thigh muscles from here, which, granted, is not that far away. He rolls down the window and whistles at Taiga; Taiga glances up. Sweat is sticking his bangs down to his forehead; it’s not helmet hair but it’s like he’d pressed his palm down flat and the imprint of it is still stuck. And then Taiga runs a hand through his hair and the impression is gone; Tatsuya raises his eyebrows (though Taiga might not see, given his sunglasses).

“You need me to move the truck?”

“Nah, I got room,” says Tatsuya (though he’d gladly hop out, pull on his rollerblades, and start playing hockey, fuck the danger to both cars—but the best thing about being rich is the built-in stupidity insurance of your own wallet).

There’s just enough for him to edge the coupe into the garage around the garish grill of Taiga’s pickup (always makes him smile, Taiga and his half-ton diesel truck hauling groceries and hockey gear). He parks his car in back next to the SUV; the wheels are still dusty from the last off-road and they’ve been extra tight on water lately so he hasn’t hosed it down.

He pulls the six-pack of beer and his third-best rollerblades out of the trunk—he could skate straight out of the garage but he’s just wearing flip flops and it’ll be easier sitting on the tailgate.

“How was the gas station?” says Taiga.

“Filled up the tank. Got you something.”

Taiga takes the six-pack, already sweating through the cardboard carton. “Inside?”

“Don’t you think we could get through it out here?”

“We could,” says Taiga. “But do we want to?”

Tatsuya enjoys drunk hockey far more than perhaps he should (blame his teammates, maybe; Taiga had for all of five seconds). It would be nice to feel up to taking off their skates and not just collapsing in the tailgate and staring up at the stars (so many out here, more than even up in the mountains back home, so many it can make them both a little dizzy stone cold sober). But the idea of that answers too many of Tatsuya’s doubts, and he’s about to maybe down four beers at once.

Taiga pushes the beer into the truck bed; his palms are cold on Tatsuya’s hips through his t-shirt. He kisses Tatsuya’s neck; Tatsuya can smell the sweat on his hair mixing with his conditioner. Tatsuya closes his eyes, breathing in. This is nice enough right now, the smell of Taiga, the smell of hockey in the air. Taiga pulls him in closer, and Tatsuya wishes he’d thought to do something better with his legs. He pulls back for a second so he can swing them up and move so he’s sitting in Taiga’s lap, the pads of his bare feet up against the side of the truck. The sun’s at the right angle to keep it cool enough in the shade; one of Tatsuya’s hands makes its way up Taiga’s thigh. He’d just touched it like this earlier today, but his imagination never does it justice. Harder than his body smacking down to the ice the wrong way, than the kind of slap shot Tatsuya dreams of making. Firm, taut, the way people on the internet talk about getting crushed.

Taiga’s kissing him over and over; he tastes like red Gatorade, sweet in the unique way of artificial fruit.

“Hockey?” says Tatsuya.

“Hm?” says Taiga.

He’s smiling like he knows exactly what he’d heard when Tatsuya pulls away, and damn it, it’s not fair. Tatsuya’s breath hisses out slowly, as if through a hole in a Ziploc bag. Taiga’s smile is wide, glowing like the goal siren.

“C’mon,” says Tatsuya, scooting away. “Let me get my skates on.”

He almost doesn’t; he almost pulls Taiga down, skates and all, and tugs him inside. But it’s January and the weather’s cool and it’s been six hours since practice, the last time Tatsuya had had a stick in his hands.

They chase after the ball, down to the wooden fence that separates their property from the neighbor’s, elevating their shots to skip over each other’s sticks that gives way to passing, the way they do on the PK together trying to get a breakaway when someone else might call it risky. The sweat runs down both of their bodies, sticks to their clothes like a cheap imitation of the rain that so rarely comes here, enough that they might go months missing it every time it does.

The beer gets left in Taiga’s truck bed, along with Tatsuya’s skates and flip flops; Taiga’s already locked it and they’re at the door when they realize. It’ll be there in the morning, not frozen the way it got when they were in college and forgot, leaving an explosion all over the inside of Tatsuya’s fourth-hand rust bucket. Living in the cold had been strange, an aberration in the middle of their years together. Not a mistake, though; on the other side of all of this there is nothing that they’d decided together that had been a mistake. Nothing they’d looked into each other’s eyes and both trusted and gone forward with, not the old abandoned rink and not college and nothing here, nothing hundreds of miles and such a long time ago that it seems the world has turned halfway over since. (There are things on Tatsuya’s side that will never stop being stupid, never stop being regrets, no matter how far healed over they are, but those are a category that is so cleanly other, the difference between this kind of hockey and the hockey they get paid to play.)

Tatsuya’s phone rings as they drift off to bed, fresh from the shower, drying off in the late sun coming steady through the windows, Taiga’s arm around Tatsuya’s waist and his head on Tatsuya’s chest. Their legs are tangled; they’re one small movement, one scratching of an itch or mindless stretch, away from discomfort, so Tatsuya doesn’t reach for it. He’ll get to it later, when Taiga’s wet hair isn’t soaking through his shirt and when he doesn’t feel the good kind of static. He wouldn’t say satisfied, but the things that always push on him can’t get to him now.


End file.
